Ewood Ace

Can't see Preston affording his wages.

Zero chance of us signing Tuanzebe he will go back to Villa or to another Premier League club on loan.

Really?

How many years have we all been saying that for?

Gallagher is a decent signing but overpriced at £5 Million especially considering we need a overhaul of the defence. Mowbray must be going with the you score 3 we score 4 approach, with his £12 Million strike force.

Did pretty well when he was in charge last season. 18 Games, 29 points and just 17 goals conceded. Bruce knows exactly what is needed to succeed in this league which is why he has done it multiple times.

Gallagher at £5 Million is overpriced but it looks as though that price is not going to come down so we need to make our minds up and decide if we are willing to pay that or if we are going to move on to other targets. The question is do we have other targets?

David Marshall has signed for Wigan on a 2 year deal. He Would have been a great signing for us an excellent experienced keeper and on a free which would had enabled us to use the Raya money on the defence. I find it staggering that we allowed Raya to leave with no replacement sorted, especially as Mowbray has previously spoken about how difficult it can be to sign players as clubs want replacements sorted first.

There is no doubting Adam's quality the doubts are whether at 33 and after playing little in 2 years does he still have the legs for a season in the Championship.

I wouldn't get your hope's up. I get the feeling that at the very most we are going to see one defender brought in either on loan or on the cheap.

That you saying he's the bully not me. I just asked why do you think he called out 2 players in their early 20's but not the more experienced players in our backline? You have obviously surmised from that, that he is a bully. I personally just think he is a coward.

He only calls out the young players, never the more experienced ones. Take last season our defence was a shambles the only two he publicly criticised were Nyambe (21) and Raya (23). He didn't call out Mulgrew, Williams, Bennett or Bell even though they were all consistently awful. Why do you think that is?

Travis was pretty much ostracized from first team action for 10 months after his sending off at Portsmouth.

Don't get me wrong Raya made plenty of errors and £3 Million is good money for him if reinvested correctly. However our whole defence was shambolic last year and the only ones Mowbray singled out publicly were the 23 year old Raya and the 21 year old Nyambe.

Or Perhaps he was annoyed that he was one of only two of our backline that were repeatedly singled out by the manager. Whilst the likes of Bennett, Mulgrew, Bell and Williams could be useless week after week and the manager never had the balls to single them out.

Whilst I wouldn't be paying the rumoured £4 Million for Darlow he is a far superior keeper to Steele or Fielding. My personal choice would be David Marshall on a free transfer and use the Raya fee on the defence.

There is no doubt that Raya was an excellent shot stopper (although even that got worse as the season went on) but his weaknesses far outweighed his strengths, his kicking, his decision making and command of his area was atrocious. I was just thinking back over last season about goals that Raya was at fault for in games that we failed to win and of the top of my head I came up with Ipswich away, Reading home, West Brom away, Birmingham home and away, Bristol City home and away, Brentford away, Rotherham away, Sheffield Wednesday away and in the cup home to Newcastle. And that is without even getting onto games like Forest away where we won. Now of course Raya's mistakes were not solely responsible for all of those lost points but they certainly played a part and even if his replacement makes half of those mistakes then we would still be 9 or so better of. £3 Million is excellent money for him but it must be reinvested.

My one worry about selling Raya would be that he is being made a scapegoat for the amount of goals conceded last season and that Mowbray thinks getting rid is the answer to sorting out the goals against column. Whilst Raya was to blame for his fair share of goals conceded he was far from the only one.

A decent signing who should be a better partner for Travis than Evans. Although his best years are probably behind him. It's a signing that says to me more mid table to top half than top 6.

Johnson is a steady signing who should be a better partner for Travis than Evans. £3 Million for Raya is good money but it must be reinvested, David Marshall on a free would be my choice of goalkeeper and use the Raya money to help improve the defence. £5 Million for Gallagher is crazy money I would pay £3 Million at the most for him, I would be disappointed that if for £5 Million we couldn't get a better striker than Gallagher.

We don't have any. Which is why Dack has so many games where he is invisible or has to drop too deep because we don't have anyone in midfield capable of getting on the ball and linking up with him. All the top teams last season had central midfielders that contributed goals and/or assists. Of our 3 regular central midfielders last year Evans and Smallwood didn't score and Travis had one goal. Those 3 also managed just 1 assist between them all season, the same amount as Raya. We did have Reed in midfield who was capable of scoring and creating but he spent most his out wide so that we could play two defensive minded 'holding midfielders'.

I said previously that if Mowbray was to stay (which I was not in favour of) it must have been on the proviso that someone was brought in to oversee player incomings and outgoings. Whilst I am very concerned about the lack of incomings, I am also concerned about the lack of outgoings as there are a number of player on the books who we should be actively looking to offload.

Thought that England were terrible why insist on playing out from the back when your players aren't good enough to do so? The Yanks defence didn't look very good but rather then get the ball forward and get at them, they constantly lost the ball trying to play it out from the back.

The performances of the two England centre backs summed up there in the space of 2 minutes. Mind you it was never a penalty anyway.

Bristol City spent £8 Million on a defender after selling Kelly to Bournemouth for £13M and that is on top of selling Flint, Bryan and Reid for a combined of £23m last summer. They have also already turned down £12 Million this window from Villa for Webster and may well still sell him for £15M+ before the window closes. Us on the other hand we spent £7 Million on a development project without having to sell a single player to help fund it.